Just Health

Too often the conversation on health focuses on individual attributes and predispositions. Dayna Bowen Matthews's Just Medicine offers a brilliant and timely assessment of how racial minorities' poor health outcomes are tied to the structural choices and decisions that society makes in how it treats certain people. Structural problems require structural solutions, and this book offers a clear and compelling vision on how to achieve health equity. ~Osagie K. Obasogie, Haas Distinguished Chair and Professor of Bioethics, University of California, Berkeley

Just Health is an awakening! It is a shockingly powerful exposition of how structural racism has caused a public health catastrophe happening in plain sight, every day, everywhere in the United States since the dawn of the nation. Elegantly written, accessible, and informative, it also offers concrete solutions to this pressing and untenable issue. A must-read for all in medicine, public health, and legal education, Dr. Matthew’s book is a major contribution to these fields. ~Kimani Paul-Emile, Fordham University School of Law

If history has taught us anything, it is that once-in-a-generation luminaries often have the vision and skill necessary to not only see the problems that ail society, but also to effectively communicate solutions to said problems. Just Health is the preeminent compilation of solutions that we need for today, and Dr. Dayna Bowen Matthew is the visionary who has succinctly and concisely put the vision on paper. Coming on the heels of an unprecedented global public health crisis, Just Health arrives at the perfect time to bring to life the narrative buried deep within our laws that have long operated to the detriment of our country’s health. This narrative is an absolute must-read for policy influencers, policy makers, students, clinicians, researchers, and concerned citizens alike. ~Daniel E. Dawes, author of The Political Determinants of Health

Dayna Matthew draws on the powerful story of how her own family battled to overcome the long odds of structural racism to explain how ill health and early death reflect a society in which African Americans often have been dehumanized, rendered unequal, and left unprotected by the law. Re-engaging the passions and partnerships that brought medicine and civil rights together in the 1960s, and honoring the achievements of her parents and grandparents, Matthew invokes the power of law to unify rather than divide. ~William Sage, the University of Texas at Austin

Matthew, dean and Harold H. Greene professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, begins her book on the health effects of structural racism on a personal note: her father died in his 40s and her mother in her 60s. 'The facts of my family’s story defy the myth that millions of other Black Americans share this all-too-familiar position because of a family breakdown or failure of personal responsibility,' she writes. A chapter dedicated to solutions 'outlines the most basic legal and policy reforms the nation needs if it is to dismantle the mechanisms supporting structural racism that prematurely ended my parents’ lives.' ~Publishers Weekly, "Healthcare Books 2022"

Proves that systemic racism is embedded in the nation’s enduring societal institutions and relegates non-white Americans to ill-health and truncated life expectancies ... Matthew's exposé of health disparities will compel experts and general readers who are concerned about public health and the state of the nation generally to rally in a civil rights–era collaborative model of intervention at all levels to hold government accountable to dismantle discrimination. ~Library Journal

Matthew points to examples of successful population-level interventions in housing, food security, education, and neighborhood violence, illustrating the alliance between health care and legal professionals that could result in producing ‘just health.’ ~Choice

This book is a reminder that we can join with multidisciplinary partners to advocate for a future that values every human life. Physicians who want to change the system that causes the social determinants of health can turn to this book for help in directing their voices to act at a political and legal level to create a future of equal opportunity for health and respect for all. ~Family Medicine